Work with me

What I bring

I'm CTO at Pstryk, where I built the platform behind Poland's leading dynamic electricity tariff from zero. Thousands of connected devices in production, prices that update every 15 minutes against the wholesale market, and a virtual power plant under active build. Before Pstryk, 17 years of full-stack work spanning Python, Go, and Ruby; cloud (GCP, AWS) and on-prem; high-throughput IoT and the messy reality of integrating with hardware vendors who shipped their last firmware update in 2017.

The reason I'm useful as a fractional CTO is not that I have opinions about architecture (everyone does). It's that I've actually shipped production-grade software in domains where most fractional CTOs haven't: regulated energy markets, IoT at scale, real-time pricing and balancing, ML for prediction and optimization. If your problem looks like one of those, you don't have to spend the first three months teaching me what a TSO is, what FCR or aFRR mean, or why smart meter rollouts reshape consumer-facing energy products.

Engagement types

I work in four shapes. They're listed in order of how I spend most of my time.

Fractional CTO

Ongoing technical leadership for an early-stage company. Architecture, hiring, vendor decisions, code reviews, and the strategic technical conversations a founder needs to have weekly. Typically one to two days per week over six to twelve months.

This is right when you're seed to Series A, you have at least one engineer (or you're hiring your first), and you need someone senior in the room making decisions that will be expensive to undo later. You don't need a full-time CTO yet, but the technical decisions you're making this quarter will shape what the company looks like in two years.

Technical advisor

Lighter-touch monthly advisory. A standing call, async Slack and email access, occasional deep-dives on specific problems you're working through. Four to eight hours per month, usually open-ended.

This is right when you already have a CTO or technical lead but you want a senior outside voice for the gnarly architectural questions, the build-versus-buy calls, hiring decisions, or domain-specific guidance in energy or IoT. It's also right if you're a non-technical founder and you want someone in your corner who can sanity-check what your technical team is telling you.

Technical due diligence

I look at a target company's tech for a VC or strategic acquirer. Code quality, architecture, scalability risks, key-person dependencies, security posture, regulatory exposure, and an honest read on whether the team will ship what they're promising. One to three weeks depending on scope, with a written report and a debrief call.

This is right when you're evaluating a deal in climate-tech, energy, IoT, or AI and you want a reviewer who understands the domain rather than a generic "the code is well-organized" report.

Interim CTO

I parachute in and run engineering full-time while you find your permanent CTO. Decisions, team, roadmap, investor conversations, the whole thing. Typically two to four months.

This is right when your CTO has left, your team needs a steady hand, and you can't afford to be in transition for six months while you search. This is the rarest engagement I take and I'm selective about when it actually makes sense.

Who I'm a good fit for

You're building something where the technology is genuinely hard. Not "we use Postgres and Kubernetes" hard, but "we integrate with regulated energy markets, manage thousands of IoT devices, build real-time inference pipelines, or negotiate with utilities" hard. Your technical decisions have weeks-long consequences, not days.

You want a partner who codes, not just advises. I will read your code. I will write code in pull requests when it helps. I will not be a name on the deck who shows up for board meetings and says vague things about scalability.

You're in or adjacent to climate, energy, IoT, AI, or hardware-software integration. This is where I have unfair advantage and where I can help the most.

Who I'm not a good fit for

You need a full-time CTO right now. Hire one. I can help you think through the search and the spec, but the fractional model is not a substitute for someone who breathes your problem every day.

Your domain is consumer mobile, pure SaaS without a hardware angle, fintech, e-commerce, or anything else far from where I've operated. You'd be better served by a fractional CTO who has actually shipped in your space.

You want someone to validate decisions you've already made. I'll tell you when I think you're wrong, even when it's uncomfortable. If that's not what you want from an outside hire, we will not enjoy working together.

How it actually works

Step one is a 30-minute intro call. No deck, no pitch. You tell me what you're building and what you're stuck on, I tell you whether I think I can help, and we agree on whether to take the next step.

If we both want to keep going, I usually start with a paid one to two-week scoped engagement: a focused architecture review or a specific problem I can deliver against. This lets us both see how we work together before committing to anything longer.

After that, if it's a fit, we'd write up a fractional CTO or advisor agreement and start. I take a small number of clients at any given time, both because the work requires real attention and because I'm still running engineering at Pstryk.

On availability

I run engineering at Pstryk full-time. This work is genuinely on the side, which means I'm selective and I generally have at most one or two open slots per quarter. If you're not ready to start within the next month or two, the intro call is still useful. I can usually point you toward someone in my network who is.